Hanging on to President Obama’s every word in a dream job
FROM THE CORNER OF THE OVAL OFFICE: One Woman’s True Story Of Her Accidental Career In The Obama White House
HHHH by Beck Dorey-Stein Bantam Press, £14.99
THE political gets personal in Beck Dorey-Stein’s account of the five years she spent working in the White House during Barack Obama’s administration. Dorey-Stein was as a stenographer, travelling around the world in his wake, recording and transcribing his interviews, briefings and speeches.
She makes for an entertaining, relatable and refreshingly frank guide to life in the orbit of the President, juggling her demanding, responsible job with a chaotic personal life.
In 2011, 26-year-old Dorey-Stein was desperate for a job. Any job. When she saw a posting on Craigslist for a stenographer at a law firm, she applied, reluctantly, out of desperation. She bucked her ideas up when she got a call explaining that the job was in fact stenographer to the President Of The United States (among his inner circle he is always known as POTUS, never Obama).
Within weeks Dorey-Stein is boarding Air Force One as frequently as you or I board buses or trains, diligently transcribing Obama’s official speeches and taking advantage of an unlimited supply of official Air Force One M&Ms while navigating the rather hostile, sink-or-swim atmosphere among the team around him.
It takes time for her to find her place but she gradually forms friendships, not least because she spends more time with colleagues than with her friends or family. And running addict Dorey-Stein has her first personal encounter with POTUS when she is sprinting on a treadmill in a Colorado hotel: “My shirt is soaked through, my hair is wet and matted, even my socks are squishy.”
And that’s when POTUS steps on to the treadmill next to her and teases: “You could have gone a little faster.”
Dorey-Stein realises she forgot to use deodorant and scuttles out of the gym in a panic. She later learns that for security reasons POTUS hasn’t been able to run outdoors since 2007.
She can hardly believe her own good fortune as she travels the world from Tanzania to Panama to the UK. There Obama makes an unscheduled detour to Stonehenge where he is “as happy as a schoolboy”. “I cannot believe this is my life,” she says.
Dorey-Stein has few meaningful encounters with POTUS, recording each one in the manner of a star-struck teen. But she has such a jaunty, conversational writing style that you would probably read on if she had a job stacking shelves. And she has always kept diaries or written accounts of her adventures so the book contains an abundance of detail and colour that brings her anecdotes to life.
However, she falls hook, line and sinker for “Jason”, a senior member of staff who reminds her of Jim Carrey. Jason might live with his long-term girlfriend but in the intense working environment of the White House, the staff frequently travelling far from home for long periods, it proves too easy for Dorey-Stein to fall into bed with him. And it gradually emerges that Jason finds it equally easy to fall into
bed with other women. But Dorey-Stein persists with a tedious affair where Jason calls all the shots, sometimes cutting ties with her for months on end, and she capitulates every time he wants her back.
Dorey-Stein’s affection for POTUS is far more interesting and it is telling that the longer she works for him, the more she admires him. He visits teenagers on a Native American reservation, excluding the press “because the President wants them to be a true conversation, not a photo op. But POTUS is best in these situations. His humanity, his core decency, burns brightest when he is sitting in a circle of metal folding chairs, surrounded by nervous kids wearing beat-up sneakers. I wish everyone could see it.”
Dorey-Stein could not stomach working for President Trump, appalled by the new regime’s atmosphere of swagger, arrogance and cluelessness, and left the world of politics to focus on her writing. The gamble paid off as she was paid a seven-figure advance for her memoir and the film rights have been optioned by Universal Pictures. And this lively, entertaining story offers a joyful nostalgia trip back to more hopeful times.